Entries in Health
(65)

In Benin, the average household spends more than 40% of its total budget on out-of-pocket health expenses each year.

Catholic Relief Services and partners piloted a health microinsurance product and delivered it through savings groups in Benin. We introduced a digital solution to improve efficiency and scalability. This document evaluates the project's ability to increase access to health services among rural households.

This brief gives an overview of the Coordinating Comprehensive Care for Children (4Children) project. 4Children is a five-year, USAID-funded project designed to improve health and wellbeing outcomes for orphans and vulnerable children affected by HIV and AIDS and other adversities.

Because of their roles as decision makers and heads of household, men play an important role in improving maternal and child health care in their communities. This facilitator's guide focuses on training male volunteers to become "counselors" who encourage fathers to change practices or adopt new behaviors that will help improve the health of their wives and children.

Catholic Relief Services commissioned Tufts University to review selected CRS programs. The objective of the review was to determine the degree of integration between nutrition and agriculture and document approaches used for integrating programming. This brief describes some of CRS’ approaches for integrating agriculture and nutrition programming within the context of 4 of Herford’s Guiding Principles for nutrition-sensitive agriculture and rural development.

Though not a part of the original program design, the USAID and PEPFAR-funded Integrated (HIV Effect) Mitigation and Positive Action for Community Transformation (IMPACT) program in Malawi responded to poor academic performance and high drop-out rates among orphans and vulnerable children in program areas by providing support to educational drop in centers and had very positive results. This brief outlines the IMPACT approach and tips for implementation.

As a part of the USAID and PEPFAR-funded Integrated (HIV Effect) Mitigation and Positive Action for Community Transformation (IMPACT) program in Malawi, community health days were held in collaboration with the Ministry of Health and community leaders in hard to reach areas. This brief outlines the program’s community health day approach, how community health days were improved based on learning, and the key results achieved from this program initiative.

Recent efforts to engage husbands antenatal care decisions have been met with limited success. The USAID and PEPFAR-funded Integrated (HIV Effect) Mitigation and Positive Action for Community Transformation (IMPACT) program in Malawi took a new approach – sending a letter from the antenatal care nurses requesting the husband’s presence at the next antenatal care appointment. This brief discusses the approach, implementation challenges, and tips for implementation.

The USAID and PEPFAR-funded Integrated (HIV Effect) Mitigation and Positive Action for Community Transformation (IMPACT) program developed a pilot mobile application to streamline and individualize a manual developed by the Ministry of Health for health surveillance assistants. This brief discusses the development and rollout of the application, the challenges experienced while using this application, and tips for implementation.

Malawi is the only country where co-location of the United States President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) and USAID’s Food for Peace resources has taken place at scale. This study looks at co-location through two CRS-led community-based programs: the Wellness and Agriculture for Life Advancement (WALA) and the Integrated (HIV Effect) Mitigation and Positive Action for Community Transformation (IMPACT) programs.

Through the USAID-funded Integrated (HIV Effect) Mitigation and Positive Action for Community Transformation (IMPACT) program and with the support of a joint Ministry of Health ART/PMTCT Technical Working Group Task Force, CRS developed and implemented a peer-based task-shifting approach known as the Expert Client model. This report includes findings from a formal study on the approach as well as monitoring data, reports, success stories and other literature on the effectiveness of this approach over three years.

As a part of the Integrated (HIV Effect) Mitigation and Positive Action for Community Transformation (IMPACT) program in Malawi, CRS and partners implemented an approach to create a protective net for vulnerable children across nine districts. This brief describes the IMPACT program’s approach to child protection, addresses program implementation challenges, and provides tips for implementation of similar programs.

CRS led two programs in the same communities in Malawi for four years: the FFP-funded Wellness and Agriculture for Life Advancement (WALA) program and the PEPFAR-funded Integrated (HIV Effect) Mitigation and Positive Action for Community Transformation (IMPACT) program. This brief describes the results of a qualitative study on the experiences and benefits of integration of these two programs.

As a part of the Integrated (HIV Effect) Mitigation and Positive Action for Community Transformation (IMPACT) program in Malawi, CRS and partners have introduced an Expert Client model to improve retention in care, increase uptake of HIV services, reduce service provider workload and strengthen referral linkages. This brief describes IMPACT’s Expert Client program model, outlines research results on its effectiveness, and lists suggestions for future implementation.